Systems
Systems '''and '''Subsystems play a key strategic element in FTL: Faster Than Light. Each ship contains Engines, Piloting, Sensors, Doors, Shields and Weapons as the most basic systems, with a number of other systems available for installation, such as Cloaking and Teleportation. Each (sub)system occupies one room on the ship, with more important ones requiring 2x2 rooms instead of 1x2, and every system requires one reactor bar for each available stage of power. (Systems written in italic are not usually found on AI-Controlled Ships, and those underlined are not always installed.) Main Systems : Systems that benefit from being manned: Shields Sustains damage-reducing shields. *Upgrading will increase your bar count by one **Requires two bars of reactor energy to power a single layer of shield. *Manning increases shield recharge speed by 10% plus 10% for each level of experience. System Cost: 150 Engines Charges the FTL drive and powers evasion. *Upgrading improves evasion, and the rate that your FTL drive charges *Manning increases evasion (5->7->10%, depending on level of experience of the crew). Upgraded Engines are used in some scenarios (blue options). *Used to outrun attackers and evade combat. Weapons Click on a weapon to charge and fire. *Weapons can also be activated/charged by pressing the corresponding (1-4) key **If already activated/charging a second click or press will activate targeting *Upgrading lets you power more weapons *Manning reduces charge time (10->15->19%) Upgraded Weapons is used in some scenarios (blue options), happens with 6+ weapons *Possibly scares some pirates before they attack (they give you some of their goods) : Systems that cannot be manned: Oxygen/Life Support Replenishes the ship's oxygen supply. *The "O2 IS LOW" warning appears when the total oxygen percentage on the ship drops below 25%. To prevent the warning: **Repair the Oxygen/Life Support system **Repair any hull breaches **Close any open airlocks *Crew oxygen deprivation appears when the total oxygen percentage drops below 5% or when standing in pink rooms with yellow outlines (indicating dangerously low O2 levels). *Upgrading increases the rate of refill *At the 2nd upgrade your oxygen refil rate actually exceeds the loss from a breach! So if you suffer a breach open the surrounding doors and power up your support system. Upgraded Oxygen/Life Support is used in some scenarios (blue options). *The only one of these I have found is to counter the slug burnout event. Instead of compeltely locking down your support system, you get one bar. Med Bay Heals crewmembers standing inside *Can only heal three standing crewmembers at a time (Excluding the Nisos, which only has two sections for healing). You can heal any number of crewmembers if you order them to pass through the Med Bay, since they are healed while in the area of the room. *Upgrading increases healing speed. *Upgraded Medbay is used in some scenarios (blue options). Only need level 2 medbay for this. *A fully upgraded Med Bay is actually strong enough to heal crew members when there is no oxygen, meaning if you are invaded you can fight them in the Med Bay while suffocating them. Very useful against Mantis. Drone Control Powers all of the ship's drones. *Drones are automated robots that each perform a different task. *Activating a drone is done in the same way as activating weapons, by clicking on or pressing the (5-8) key **Each activation will activate an inactive drone or consume a Drone Part if none are available. **The drone will stay active until either it or its system is destroyed. **If at the end of combat you have any active and powered flying drones they will be recovered with the Drone Recovery Arm, causing you to regain Drone Parts equal to the amount of active Drones. Drones on board your ship stay with you until they are destroyed or you inactivate/sell the drone plan; the Drone Recovery Arm does not apply to them. *Upgrading lets you power more drones. *Drones that fly around a ship can be shot down by enemy fire if they are in front of the gun when it fires or if they are hit by incoming fire (you can't hit your own drones). System Cost: 80 Teleporter This system allows you to send crewmen to other ships to damage their systems and kill their crew. 20 second recharge time. Upgrade to reduce the time. Crewmen must be in the teleporter to be sent. Able to retract 4 crewmen if they are in a 2x2 room, although crew trying to break down doors will not be teleported. Unable to pull enemies onto your ship. Works through normal shields. Teleporters are used in some scenarios (blue options). *You can use high level teleporters to lock onto the lifesigns of Federation ships drifting through nebulas, and thereby easily catch up with them. *A Teleporter is required to unlock the Mantis Cruiser *You can use teleporters to free prisoners aboard slaver vessels, this gives you a free crewmate. If you kill the crew without destroying the ship you will get another crewmember. Note: While the teleporter works through shields, it does not work through Zoltan shields. However, even with Zoltan shields equipped on your own ship there are scripted events where enemies can board your ship, with the tag line "How they got past your Zoltan shields is a mystery!" System Cost: 75 Cloak Cloaking increases your ships evade by 60 points and prevents it from being targeted by enemy weapons or drones. *Enemy weapons don't charge while the cloak is active. *Enemies can't teleport onto or off of a cloaked ship. *Enemy bording drones will drift while cloak is active and retarget when cloak finishes. Used in some scenarios and for escaping (blue options). System Cost: 150 Artillery Beam (The Osprey/Nisos only) Powers a slow charging, high-powered beam that pierces all shields and does one damage per room hit. Upgrading and giving it more power gives faster charge rate. Powering off resets charge. System Cost: 0/30/50/80 Subsystems (These systems are always powered and don't take power from the reactor, but can be disabled and thus making them temporarily inactive until you repair them.) : System(s) that benefit from being manned: Piloting Only system that initially requires manning to be of any use. *Manning: **Activates the FTL drive **Activates evasion *Upgrading adds auto-pilot, meaning your ship has a fraction of normal evasion when not manned. *Used in some scenarios (blue options). System Cost: 150 Systems that can not be manned: Sensors Reveals the interior of your ship *Upgrading reveals information about enemy ships, such as enemy crew and their power distribution. *Used in some scenarios (blue options): Checking if it is safe to get info from AI ship carrying info. (level 3) System Cost: 40 Doors Allows for the remote operation of the ships doors. *Although simple in theory, doors have many uses: **Can be used to vent oxygen from rooms in order to suffocate a fire. **Can be used to quickly supply oxygen from the rest of the ship to recently repaired areas. **When facing a superior boarding party (say you have mostly zoltan/engi, or 4 mantis board your ship!) you can vent the entire ship save the med bay/rooms beyond it. This will quickly force the boarders to assault your medbay, where your crew will be healed while fighting. Once the boarders are in the medbay you can safely close off/resupply the ship with oxygen as you medbay-tank them down. *Upgrading impedes fire spread and intruder movement. *A destroyed door system prevents remote operation of doors, but still allow crew (and boarders) to enter and exit rooms. System Cost: 60 Category:Systems